A portion of the disclosure of this patent document contains material which is subject to copyright protection. The copyright owner has no objection to the facsimile reproduction by anyone of the patent document or the patent disclosure, as it appears in the Patent and Trademark Office patent files or records, but otherwise reserves all copyright rights whatsoever.
The invention disclosed herein relates to workgroup application software. In particular, the present invention relates to methods and systems for providing users with access to a variety of workgroup applications on a subscription basis and the ability to host the applications for other users.
Workgroup or groupware software applications, which provide multiple users with the ability to collaborate on projects, are extremely powerful and increasingly popular tools for the performance of work by teams of people. Many such applications are available for such tasks as editing documents, holding chats and discussions, networking employment opportunities, managing accounts, providing help, and holding auctions, to name a few.
Traditionally, the use of a groupware application required the license of a groupware software product and the installation of the product on a server computer and possibly the client computers of the users. This limited the availability of groupware to those with the computer and financial resources to obtain and set up the necessary hardware and software components. A new type of groupware, termed user initiated groupware or UIG, was introduced in the form of the Instant!TEAMROOM(trademark) groupware available from Lotus Development Corp. of Cambridge, Mass. Using the Instant!TEAMROOM(trademark) groupware, a user having a personal computer and access to the Internet can set up a secure collaboration site, choose the team members, invite them in, and collaborate on a project by sharing documents and conversations. The user setting up the collaboration site subscribes to the use of the Instant!TEAMROOM(trademark) software by paying for the time the users actually use the collaboration site, thus saving on the expense of purchasing the necessary hardware and software.
While this user initiated groupware product provides some benefits over existing groupware, it fails to account for the many types of groupware applications and the variety of tasks and projects they support. Indeed, many other types of groupware applications can not take advantage of the benefits of the UIG model without significant modifications.
There is therefore a need for a comprehensive framework for allowing traditional groupware applications to become user initiated groupware software and for offering such groupware to users for application hosting. The present invention provides such a framework.
It is an object of the present invention to solve the problems described above with existing groupware applications.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a framework for converting groupware applications into a form which may be initiated and hosted by users.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a tool for software vendors to convert groupware applications into a form ready for user initiated hosting.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a practical, cost-effective way to use the world wide web as a vehicle for collaboration.
It is another object of the present invention to allow service providers the flexibility to offer user initiated groupware applications on a variety of different financial and legal terms.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a financial model for renting and hosting user initiated groupware applications.
Some of the above and other objects are achieved by a method for establishing a collection of application software programs capable of being hosted by a user. The method involves receiving on a computer system application kits for software applications, each application kit including executable application files and additional application related data such as marketing or technical information. The application kits may be stored in an application database.
For each software application contained in an application kit, one or more offerings are created, each offering including at least some of the additional application related data in the application kit and pricing terms for hosting of the application. The offerings are published on a computer accessible to the user to thereby allow the user to select an offering and host the software application relating thereto on the identified server.
In addition, for each software application contained in an application kit, a server upon which the software application may be hosted is identified and may be contained in the offering. For a given offering, the executable application files in the application kit are copied to the server identified in the offering, to prepare the application for hosting on the server. A private copy of the application, referred to herein as an application instance, is created on the host server once the user orders the application.
In accordance with one aspect of the invention, a plurality of offerings may be created for any software application. The offerings may contain different pricing terms. For example, an application may be offered to the general public at list price, requiring a credit card for payment, and the same application may also be offered to a site licensee from a private web page at a volume price to be charged to a standing purchase order.
The offerings may be organized into a plurality of catalogs of related software applications. The offerings may alternatively be organized into classes of offerings intended for particular users, such as in classes organized by pricing terms, and access to each class may be limited to the particular users intended therefor. Thus, drawing from the pool of applications stored in the warehouse or inventory, the host such as a service provider can create different groupings such that catalogs may be constructed for general business, vertical markets, site agreements, special promotions, single vendor, etc.